Posts Tagged ‘Mein Kampf’

In November last year, 2018, that redoubtable opponent on Fascism and Zionism Tony Greenstein put up an article attacking the Likud government and the Israeli state for trying to discourage mix marriage between Jews and Palestinians, entitled ‘Israel’s War on Interracial Relationships and Miscegenation’.

The article was provoked by the controversy in Israel over the marriage of Lucy Aharish, an Arab TV news presenter, and Tsahi Halevi, the star of the TV series Fauda. The marriage was denounced by Interior Minister Aryeh Deri and Oren Hazan, a Likud backbencher, as well as Yair Lapid, the head of the Centre Party, Yesh Atid. The article also reported how various Israeli towns, like Petah Tikva, have tried to stop Jews socializing or marrying with Palestinians. That municipality has set up a special team to tackle Jewish women dating Arab or ethnic minority men. In the East Jerusalem settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev a vigilante group of young men patrol the streets seeking to disrupt any romantic meetings between Jews and ethnic minorities. As well as Petah Tikvah, Tel Aviv and Kiryat Gat also have government sponsored campaigns to prevented racial mixing. There’s even a counselling programme for Jewish women in an interracial relationship, as well as phoneline for people to ring to inform on Jewish women going out with Palestinians. The religious organization, Yad L’ahim, also assists these campaigns with its Anti-Assimilation Department, which has produced a video for use with the police.

Back in 2011 Tzipi Hotoveli, in her role as Chair of the Status of Women Committee in the Knesset, invited the racist far-right party Lehava to speak on how marriages between Jews and non-Jews could be prevented. The Education Ministry under Naftali Bennett also removed two books from the English language curriculum, Borderlife and Trumpet in the Wadi in 2015 and 2016, because they were romances between Jews and Palestinians. The article also notes that there was a similar controversy over the marriage of another mixed couple, Morel Malka and Mahmud Mansour. Civil marriage does not exist in Israel, so Malka converted to her husband’s religion, Islam. The couple’s wedding ceremony was marked by a demonstration by Lehava, whose members screamed anti-Arab slogans, including ‘Death to the Arabs’.

The article concluded

Because for Zionists, mixed marriage is not so much a religious as a racial/national matter. Race in Israel is defined by religion, hence why inter-marriage is not so much considered a sin as a form of treason. That was what an opinion poll found in Yediot Aharanot. Over half Israeli Jews believe that marriage is ‘national treason’. ‘Marriage to an Arab is national treason’.

This stance against racial intermixing is very similar to that of Apartheid South Africa and the American south during segregation. And, although the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism states that it is anti-Semitic to draw comparisons between Jews and Nazis, it is also very similar to Nazi Germany. The Nazis also passed legislation to prevent intermarriage between Aryan Germans and those peoples they judged inferior, like Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and Blacks.

Hitler himself stated his opposition to miscegenation in Mein Kampf, where he claimed that the Aryans had declined through interbreeding with the peoples they had conquered and colonized. He wrote in Mein Kampf

The Aryan races-often in absurdly small numbers-overthrow alien nations, and favoured by the numbers of people of lower grade who are at their disposal to aid them, they proceed to develop, according to the special conditions for life in the acquired territories-fertility, climate, etc., the qualities of intellect and organization which are dormant in them. In the course of a few centuries they create cultures originally stamped with their own character of the land and the people which they have conquered. As time goes on, however, the conquerors sin against the principle of keeping the blood pure (a principle which they adhered to at first) and begin to blend with the original inhabitants whom they have subjugated, and end their own existence as a peculiar people; for the sin committed in Paradise was inevitably followed by expulsion.

Adolf Hitler, My Struggle (London: Paternoster Row 1933) 121.

The Israeli state’s attempts to ban interracial romances and marriage is therefore exactly the same as that of South Africa, segregation America, and Hitler’s Germany, regardless of the IHRA’s attempt to rule out any discussion of it as ‘anti-Semitic’. It is part of the regime’s colonialist nature and subjection of the Palestinians.

One of the defining features of Fascism along with racism, extreme nationalism and militarism is elitism. Democracy is violently rejected in favour of the rule of elites, who are alone are believed capable of ruling. Hitler stated this very clearly in Mein Kampf. He wrote

We must bear in mind that if a certain sum of high energy and efficiency has been extracted from a nation and appears to be united in one single aim and has been finally aggregated out of the inertia of the masses, this small percentage, ipso facto, rises to become master of the rest. The world’s history is made by minorities, given that they have incorporated in them the greater part of the nation’s will power and determination.

Therefore, that which appears to many to be a disadvantage is in reality the necessary condition of our victory. It is in the greatness and difficulty of our task that the probability lies that only the best fighters will join us in the fight. The pledge of success lies in choice of the very best.

Adolf Hitler, My Struggle (London: Paternoster Row 1933) 157.

Hitler and the Nazis firmly believed that businessmen formed part of this ruling elite, because they had demonstrated their biological fitness through their success as businessmen. It was an attitude drawn from Social Darwinism, which promoted the ‘survival of the economic fittest’, a view that extended far beyond the Nazi party.

The Conservatives in Britain and the Republicans in America similarly believe, as I have blogged about several times previously, that business leaders are an elite particularly fitted for government. Both parties have promoted the interests of business and passed legislation further benefiting and enriching the leaders of big business, at the expense of ordinary working people, who have been reduced to utter poverty. There have been comments by Republican and Libertarian spokespeople, who have made these attitudes very clear. Barack Obama, for example, was derided because he was a community organizer Chicago rather than a businessman. Theresa May leads a cabinet of millionaires, which farcically pretend not to be part of ‘the elite’. David Cameron and Boris Johnson are old Etonian toffs, while Jacob Rees-Mogg is a similarly privately educated aristo. When the abolition of the House of Lords in favour of an elected upper house was mooted earlier this century, it was attacked by the Tories and the right-wing press. One of the arguments used was that the hereditary peerage had the right to sit in parliament because they possessed the necessary skills through their breeding and upbringing.

Coupled to this elitism and snobbery is a complete contempt for ordinary people. Mike and the other left-wing bloggers have posted many times some of the sneering comments the Tories have made about the poor and homeless. At its grassroots, the Tory party is dying partly because of this attitude. People aren’t joining it, and members of the constituency party have complained about their views being ignored and neglected in favour of rich donors.

It is about time the Tories and Republicans were ousted, and the elitism and Social Darwinist celebration of the rich and powerful ended at last. We need a Corbyn government here in Britain which really does work ‘for the many, not for the few’.

A week or so ago I put up a passage from Hitler’s Table Talk, in which the Nazi leader made it absolutely clear that he didn’t want Nazi functionaries and members of the civil service holding positions or shares in private companies because of the possible corruption that would entail. He illustrated his point with the case of the Danube Shipping Company, a private firm that got massively rich in pre-Nazi Germany through government subsidies, because it had members of the ruling coalition parties on its board.

Which is pretty much the same as the recent fiasco in which Chris Grayling has given 13,800 pounds of public money to Seaborne Freight, a ferry company that has no ships and no experience of running a shipping company, to run a ferry service to Ostend as part of the preparations for a No Deal Brexit. Other companies also wanted to be considered for the contract, like Brittany Ferries, but despite Grayling’s huffing that there were extensive negotiations, the contract wasn’t put out to competitive tender. It seems instead to have been awarded because Mark Bamford, whose maritime law firm shares the same headquarters as Seaborne Freight, is the brother of Antony Bamford, who is a Tory donor.

When a monster like Adolf Hitler, who killed millions of innocents, starts talking sense in comparison to this government, you know we’re in a very desperate way.

Despite his desire to outlaw personal connections between members of the Nazi party and civil service and private corporations, Hitler still believed that business should be included in government. On page 179 of Mein Kampf he wrote

There must be no majority making decisions, but merely a body of responsible persons, and the word “Council” will revert to its ancient meaning. Every man shall have councilors at his side, but the decision shall be made by one Man.

The national State does not suffer that men whose education and occupation has not given them special knowledge shall be invited to advise or judge on subjects of a specialized nature, such as economics. The State will therefore subdivide its representative body into political committees including a committee representing professions and trades. In order to obtain advantageous co-operation between the two, there will be over them a permanent select Senate. But neither Senate nor Chamber will have power to make decisions; they are appointed to work and not to make decisions. Individual members may advise, but never decide. That is the exclusive prerogative of the responsible president for the time being.

In Hitler, My Struggle (London: Paternoster Row 1933).

Hitler here was influenced by Mussolini and the Italian Fascist corporate state. A corporate was an industrial body uniting the employer’s organization and trade union. Mussolini reorganized the Italian parliament so that it had an official Chamber of Fasces and Corporations. There were originally seven corporations representing various industries and sectors of the economy, though this was later expanded to 27. In practice the corporate state never really worked. It duplicated the work of the original civil service and increased the bureaucracy, as another 100,000 civil servants had to be recruited to staff it. It was also not allowed to make decisions on its own, and instead acted as a rubber stamp for the decisions Mussolini had already made.

Once in power, however, the Nazis quietly discarded the corporate state in practice. The economy was reorganized so that the economy was governed through a series of industrial associations for the various sectors of industry, to which every company and enterprise had to belong, and which were subject to the state planning apparatus. When the shopkeepers in one of the southern German towns tried to manage themselves as a corporation on the Italian model, the result was inflation. The Gestapo stepped in, the experiment was closed down and its members interned in Dachau. However, the Nazis were determined to give their support to private industry and these industrial organisations were led by senior managers of private firms, even when most of the companies in a particular sector were owned by the state.

Something similar to the Nazi and Fascist economic systems has arisen in recent years through corporate sponsorship of political parties, particularly in America. So important have donations from private industry become, that the parties ignore the wishes of their constituents once in power to pass legislation benefiting their corporate donors. The result of this is that public confidence in Congress is low, at between 19 and 25 per cent, and a study by Harvard University concluded that America was no longer a functioning democracy so much as a corporate oligarchy.

The same situation prevails in Britain, where something like 75 per cent of MPs are millionaires, either company directors or members of senior management. New Labour was particularly notorious for its corporate connections, which had already caused scandals under John Major’s administration. Tony Blair and his cronies appointed the staff and heads of various government bodies from donors to the Labour party, giving them posts on the same bodies that were supposed to be regulating the industries their companies served. The result of this was that the Labour government ignored the wishes of the British public to pass legislation which, like Congress in America, benefited their donors. See George Monbiot’s book, Captive State.

It’s time this quasi-Fascist system of corporate government was brought to an end, and British and American governments ruled for the people that elected them, not the companies that bought their politicians.

In my last post I discussed the virtual identity of some of the Libertarians’ ideas of citizenship and those of Hitler and the Nazis. Some of those on the Libertarian right, including Republicans in the US and Kippers over here, admire the ideas about suffrage and the right to vote of the SF writer Robert A. Heinlein in his book, Starship Troopers.

This is set in a future where Earth has been united into a global, highly militarized state in which the right to vote is confined only to those, who have served in the armed forces. You hear the same ideas echoed by some of the Libertarians, who openly talk about their admiration for the book. Hitler also believed in the same principles. In Mein Kampf he stated that in the Nazi ‘national state’ only those, who had done their national service and were certified healthy, meaning eugenically sound, would become citizens. Women would acquire citizenship only through marriage or becoming involved in business.

What is also shocking about Hitler’s ideas of citizenship is how close the Tory party is also approaching them with their actions in the deportation of Windrush migrants and now the compulsory registration of EU citizens and their children. The registry states that the government has the right to share their details with other public and private organisations, but will not say who. Mike has already posted up two pieces about it, commenting that it looks very much like the Tories are preparing them to be another minority they can persecute. People are understandably extremely worried about this. One Jewish man in response to the Tories’ latest plans posted up the tattoo of his identity number foisted on him for the Nazi camps.

In the chapter ‘Citizens and Subjects of the State’ in Mein Kampf, Hitler rails against how foreigners could become German citizens simply by living there, even if they were children of Blacks, and praises America for legislation banning the immigration of certain races and individuals on eugenics grounds. Hitler wrote

The institution which to-day is wrongly named “the State” only knows of two kinds of individual: State citizens and foreigners. State citizens are all those who, either by birth or naturalization, enjoy the rights of State citizenship; foreigners are those who enjoy similar rights under other States.

Nowadays these rights are acquired, in the first place, by the fact of being born within the frontiers of a State. Race and nationality play no part in it. The child of a negro who once lived in a German protectorate and now is domiciled in Germany is automatically a citizen of the German State.

The whole procedure of acquiring State citizenship is not very different from that of becoming a member of an automobile club for instance.

I know that that this is unwelcome hearing; but anything crazier and less thought out than our present laws of State citizenship is hardly possible to conceive. But there is at least one State in which feeble attempts to achieve a better arrangement are apparent. I, of course, don’t mean our pattern German Republic, but the United States of America, where they are trying, partially, at any rate, to include commonsense in their councils. They refuse to allow immigration of elements which are bad from the health point of view, and absolutely forbid naturalization of certain defined races, and thus are making a modest start in the direction of a view which is not unlike the conception of the national state.

Adolf Hitler, My Struggle (London: Paternoster Row 1933) p. 174.

The Windrush migrants Tweezer and her collaborators tried to deport illegal were Black Britons, who were born in our colonies. Often they had lived over here since they were children. They thus parallel the Black Germans against whose citizenship Hitler rants in the above passage. And now it seems the Tories are keen to begin a new process of victimization against EU migrants.

Hitler also made it clear that he believed that members of certain European races – the Slavs – could not become Germans for the same reason he excluded non-Whites from German citizenship. On pages 153-4 he wrote

It was truly distressful to see how, during the last hundred years, people holding these opinions – in all good faith, most of them – played with the word “Germanize”. I remember how in my own youth this term led to amazingly false conceptions. In Pan-German circles one heard it suggested that with help from the Government, Germanization of the Austrian Slav population might be successfully carried out.

It is hardly imaginable that any one should think that German could be made out of, say, a negro or a Chinaman, because he has learned German and is ready to talk it for the rest of his life, and to vote for some German political party.

The process would mean a beginning of bastardization of our race, and in our case not Germanization but destruction of the German element.

Since nationality, or rather race, is not a matter of language but of blood, it would only be possible to talk about Germanization if the process could alter the nature of the blood of the person subjected to it. That, however, is impossible. It would have to take place, then, by mixing the blood, and that would mean lowering the level of the superior race.

A few years ago I found a book on race and immigration in the Central Library here in Bristol. It was a collection of articles from the Tory and right-wing press, including the Spectator and Salisbury Review arguing essentially the same point: that most British people, in contrast to contemporary official attitudes, regard race as the defining feature of nationality. This is certainly how Tweezer and the Tories see it.

The Tory party is very keen to present a modern, anti-racist face, even since David Cameron took over, cutting links with the Monday Club and expelling those with connections to the BNP and racist Right. But no matter how many BAME members of the cabinet there are, there is still a very nasty racist attitude underneath. This says that Blacks, Asians and other ethnic minorities can never truly be British. They should always be considered foreigners without the same rights as traditional White Brits, and can be arbitrarily deported or discriminated against.

I am not saying that the Tories want to round them up into concentration camps, or sterilize or exterminate them. But they do have ideas on citizenship that are increasingly similar to those Hitler laid out in Mein Kampf. Ideas that have to be resisted.

Okay, I’ve been trying to avoid blogging about the Nazis over the Christmas period. The season of peace and goodwill seems to me to be too precious to be spoiled with discussion of Hitler and his band of thugs. But I found a very interesting passage in Hitler’s Mein Kampf last night, which is very similar to the ideas some Libertarians and members of the Republican party over the other side of the Pond and various people on the British extreme right have on citizenship and military service.

I’ve discussed before how many of them follow the ideas of the late SF author, Robert Heinlein, in his book Starship Troopers, that only those, who have served in the armed forces should be granted citizenship and the right to vote. Starship Troopers was filmed by Paul Verhoeven, the director of Robocop and the Arnie version of Total Recall, amongst other movies, in the 1990s. He intended the film to be a satire, but some of those who saw the movie appear to have missed the point. I put up a piece from YouTube a little while, which pulled the book apart and showed the Fascistic worldview underneath, as well as the way the book contradicts itself on certain points.

Hitler made it clear in several passages in Mein Kampf that only those, who had served in the army through National Service should qualify as citizens. The passage here comes from the 1933 English abridged translation, published by Paternoster Row in London as My Struggle. On page 163 Hitler wrote

The Army also is not there merely to teach a man how to march and stand at attention, but it has to act as the final and highest school of national instruction. The young recruit must, of course, learn the use of his weapon, but at the same time he must continue his training for his future life. In that school the boy shall be transformed into a man; he shall not merely learn to obey, but shall be trained with a view to commanding at some future time. He shall learn to be silent, not only when he is justly blamed, but to bear injustice in silence, if necessary.

Fortified by the confidence in his own strength, filled with the esprit de corps which he feels in common with the rest, the boy shall attain to the conviction that his nation is unconquerable.

When his military service is over he must be able to show two documents: his legal papers as citizen of the State, which allow him to take part in public affairs, and his certificate of health, stating that, as regards health, he is fit to marry.

In the next paragraph he states that girls should be educated to be mothers.

In the case of female education, the main stress should be laid on bodily training; and after that, on development of character; and, last of all, of the intellect. But the one absolute aim of female education must be with a view to the future mother.

He returns to the theme later in the chapter ‘Citizens and Subjects of the State’, where he rejects the traditional Weimar categories of citizenship, where people were either state citizens or foreigners. He attacked that because

Race and nationality play no part in it. The child of a negro who once lived in a German protectorate and now is domiciled in Germany is automatically a citizen of the German State.

The whole procedure of acquiring State citizenship is not very different from that of becoming a member of an automobile club for instance. (p. 174).

He demanded instead that ‘the national State’ should divide ‘its inhabitants into three classes: State citizens, State subjects and foreigners’ and went on

In principle, birth only gives the status of a subject. This does not carry with it the right to serve yet as State official nor to take active part in politics, in the sense of voting at elections. In the case of every “State subject” race and nationality have to be proved. The “subject” is free at any time to cease being a subject and become a citizen in the country corresponding with his nationality. The “foreigner’ is only different from the “subject” in that he is a subject in a foreign State.

The young “subject” German nationality is bound to undergo the school education which is laid down for every German. Later on he must consent to undergo the bodily exercises as laid down by the State, and finally he enters the Army. Military training is universal. After his military service is over, the healthy young man with a blameless record will be solemnly invested with the rights of State citizenship. This is the most important document for his whole life on earth.

It must be held in greater honour to be a citizen of this Reich, even if only a crossing-sweeper, than to be a king in a foreign State.

The German girl is a “State subject”, but marriage makes her a citizen. But a German woman engaged in business may be granted rights of citizenship. (p. 175).

This is very close to Heinlein’s and the Libertarian’s ideas, with the exception that I don’t think Heinlein argued that women should only become citizens by marrying or becoming business entrepreneurs. It’s also very close to the attitudes of the Republican right and Fox News. A little while the Conservative propaganda broadcaster aired a piece saluting an American college that had made military style training a mandatory part of the curriculum for its freshers.

As for women, the extreme Right in both Britain and America is worried about the low birthrates in the West compared with Islam and the Developing World. They also have extremely traditional views about gender roles, so Libertarians like Vox Day and other antifeminists demand that women should stay at home to raise children rather than go out to work. Hitler’s recommendation that women should qualify for citizenship if they marry or have a business career looks positively progressive by comparison.

Heinlein’s ideas have also been taken over by part of UKIP. One of the leading Kippers a while ago said he thought it was a good idea. It’s questionable whether he really believed it or was simply try to appeal to the Rightists that did.

The belief that only those who have done their national service should be citizens on its own does not make someone a Fascist or a Nazi. But it is an undemocratic, Nazi idea. It should be rejected not just for itself, but also because it is part of the wider complex of Nazi ideology, which could all too easily follow its adoption.

A week or so ago I put up a post about The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups by Jon E. Lewis, and its chapter roundly debunking Holocaust denial. The book is a popular volume on conspiracy theories, describing and frequently debunking 100 such conspiratorial beliefs about the death of Princess Diana, the Men In Black, the assassination of J.F.K., and Martin Luther King, Area 51, Ronald Reagan, the Priory of Zion of Holy Blood, Holy Grail infamy and many more, including Holocaust denial.

Another infamous anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, that also gets thoroughly disproven, is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which the book gives in its full title, the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and deals with on pages 433 to 450. The Protocols are a notorious forgery, concocted by the tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana, to encourage Nicholas II to be even more anti-Semitic and persecute the Jews even worse than he already was. It is one of the leading sources of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and was read and influenced many Fascists. It was proven to be a forgery as long ago as the 1920, but even after this was revealed, some of those, who had read it continued to be maintain that it was symbolically true, even if it wasn’t factually. Unfortunately, the book continues to have a very wide circulation, particularly in the Middle East and in eastern Europe.

The history of this vile book is briefly described on pages 433-5. The chapter states that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was first published in 1897 as an appendix to the book, The Antichrist Is Near At Hand by the Russian writer, Sergei Nilus. It claims to be an instruction manual for a cabal of anonymous Jews planning to conquer and subdue the Christian world.

It states that the chief points of the Protocols are that the plot will remain invisible until it is so strong it cannot be overcome; government is to be increasingly centralized; press freedoms shall be restricted; gentile are to be distracted by games and amusements; and all non-Jewish religions will be swept away.

The book was immensely popular in Russia and the rest of the world. One enthusiast was the industrialist Henry Ford, of motor industry fame, who printed sections in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. He believed it exactly described the world situation as it was in his time, and used them to try to influence the US senate to stop America joining the League of Nations.

The first person to show that the Protocols were a forgery was Lucien Wolf. In his The Jewish Bogey and the Forged Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion of 1920 showed that sections of the Protocols had been lifted with only very minor changes from a satire written by a French lawyer, Maurice Joly, Dialogue aux Enfers entre Montesquieu et Machiavelli (“Dialogue in Hell between Montesquieu and Machiavelli”). This was itself influenced by Eugene Sue’s 1843 conspiracy novel, The Mysteries of Paris. The Protocols was also based on the 1868 novel, Biarritz, by the German spy Hermann Goedsche, written under the pseudonym Sir John Retcliffe. This had a chapter describing how a fictitious group of rabbis met at midnight every century in a cemetery to plan the further progress of Jewish world domination.

Lewis suggests the Protocols were probably forged by Matvei Golovinski, one of the agents of the Okhrana. He hoped to justify the tsarist regime’s persecution of the Jews by whipping up a scare about revolutionaries in the pay of the Jews planning the downfall of the monarchy. As a result, pogroms were launched against the Jews in 1905-6. And the truth of the conspiracy described by the Protocols was seen by all too many people as confirmed by the Russian Revolution of 1917, some of whose leaders happened to be Jews.

After the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, Adolf Hitler made the Protocols compulsory reading in schools. Lewis goes to describe how, despite or because of their influence in causing the Holocaust, the Protocols continue to be held as ‘fact’. Egyptian television broadcast a series in 2000 that claimed there was a connection between the Protocols and the foundation of Israel. The Protocols could also been found in al-Qaeda training camps. They’re also popular with Hamas, and in America they’re distributed by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. That section of the chapter ends

In fact, wherever anti-Semites gather you’ll find well-thumbed copies of the Protocols. That any of these organisations or their adherents could not discover within at most thirty seconds’ worth of research that the Protocols are, as a Swiss court described them as long ago as 1935, “ridiculous nonsense”, forgeries and plagiarism, beggars belief.

The book gives each conspiracy a threat level, according to how apparently plausible they are. You won’t be surprised to find that the threat level of the Protocols is zero.

The chapter also lists for further reading the following:

Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 1996.

Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy, 1998.

Lucien Wolf, The Jewish Bogey and the Forged Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, 1920.

The book provides extracts from the main documents behind or about the various conspiracies, so that readers can make up their own minds. This includes the Protocols, extracts from which are reproduced on pages 436-50. Lewis obviously trusts his readers to follow his entirely correct judgement of the Protocols, and similarly realise that they are a forgery. This is also useful, because opponents of anti-Semitism, racism and Fascism can read them without having to give money to Nazis, anti-Semites and Islamists.

I wondered if they’re shouldn’t be a proper, scholarly edition of the Protocols, written by orthodox historians and opponents of anti-Semitism, aimed not just at debunking the Protocols, but also for decent people interested in its noxious influence on Nazism and other anti-Semitic ideologies. The Bavarian government did something like this a little while ago to Mein Kampf after it came out of copyright. The government had used its ownership of the book’s copyright to prevent its publication in Germany. When this expired, they decided that the best way to combat its adoption once again by neo-Nazis would be to prepare a properly annotated version by mainstream historian of the Third Reich.

The problem with suppressed literature is that it acquires a glamour simply by being forbidden. I doubt very many people in Britain have even heard of the Protocols, but they are published and read by Nazis, and briefly appeared on the shelves of one bookshop in the north of England during the conspiracy craze of the 1990s because they were cited by one of the UFO conspiracy theorists, Bill English, in his book, Behold a Pale Horse. In this situation, it is very good that apart from general books on Fascism and Nazism, there are works specifically dedicated to exposing and debunking this vile, murderous hoax.

Radio 4 tomorrow, 14th April 2017, are marking the 50th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech with a programme in their ‘Archive Hour’ series at 8.00 pm. Entitled ‘Archive on 4: 50 Years On: Rivers of Blood’, the blurb for this on page 117 of the Radio Times runs

Amol Rajan reflects on the Conservative MP Enoch Powell’s incendiary 1968 Rivers of Blood speech, and the impact it continues to have today. And for the first time the speech is broadcast complete on British radio, as actor Ian Mc Diarmid reads it in full. The text of the speech included observations on immigrants taken from Powell’s Wolverhampton constituents, and ended with a reference to a moment in Virgil’s Aeneid, when the prophetess Sibyll predicts a civil war in Italy with “the Tiber foaming with much blood.’

The paragraph on the programme on the opposite page, 116, by Jane Anderson, the magazine’s radio editor, gives the following additional information:

It has been 50 years since Enoch Powell delivered his incendiary Rivers of Blood speech to a Conservative party meeting in Birmingham. Only a short section was recorded at the time and so, like presenter Amol Rajan, I have read the speech in its entirety. The post-Brexit vote echoes are rather chilling. What shocked me most, however, was not Powell’s own words – he was an incredibly bright and eloquent man, whatever his political views – but those of his constituents, as read in full here by the actor Ian McDiarmid: “Then the immigrants moved in. With growing fear, she (an old lady) saw one house after another taken over. The quiet street became a place of noise and confusion. Regretfully, her white tenants moved out.”

Lord Adonis has already expressed his very strong fears about the programme. According to today’s I, he has written to Ofcom expressing his deep concern that the programme should be broadcast at this time, and requesting them to order the Beeb not to broadcast it. The I‘s article also states that Ofcom has no power to tell anybody what or what not broadcast. The Beeb has also issued a reply stating that broadcasting Powell’s infamous words does not constitute endorsement.

No, it certainly doesn’t, and the selection of a British Asian presenter for the programme does indicate fairly clearly that this is not going to be an endorsement of Powell’s vile views. And there’s an irony here in the choice of actor to read the speech. If memory serves me correctly, Ian McDiarmid, amongst other roles, was the Galactic Emperor, AKA Senator Palatine, AKA Darth Sidious in Star Wars. Of course, there are probably very many other good reasons why he is the right person to read the speech. But for all the Star Wars fans, it’s still going to be the Dark Lord of the Sith reading out Powell’s evil speech.

I’ve no problem with it being read out in its entirety, if it’s properly critiqued. This is why I don’t have a problem with German universities issuing an annotated version of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. If you want to combat evil and racism, you have to study it, and take it apart to refute it. And Powell’s wretched speech has cast a long shadow over British politics. Yasmin Alibhai-Browne in one of her column’s in the I mentioned how some Whites mutter comments about Enoch being right without going any further. The NF used to sell Union Jack badges, which had around the edge ‘Enoch Was Right’. And last year or so Simon Heffer and other right-wing journos from the Torygraph and Heil published a volume of articles celebrating the noxious old monetarist, Enoch at 100.

The impression I had was that Powell, otherwise known as ‘Scowly Powelly’ as the other kids at school used to call him, really wasn’t racist. He could speak Urdu, and sincerely admired Indian culture. On the other hand, a friend I used to work with, who was very active in the anti-Apartheid movement, said that could have just been from a desire for promotion. British civil servants in India were paid more if they could speak an Indian language. He also initially believed that Britain had an obligation to support and treat well its imperial subjects. What he was unprepared for was the hostility to the new coloured immigrants from ordinary Whites in his constituency.

And the issues outlined in the speech are still with us. I’ve heard people complain about Whites being forced out of their neighbourhoods by Blacks and other immigrants, who wanted to take their houses. I’ve seen this complaint directed against Muslims by the Islamophobic ‘counterjihad’ websites. And the Tories are still playing on these fears. Mike earlier this week put up a piece about the Tories producing a pamphlet directed at the residents of one area around London. This threatened that if Labour got won the council elections in May, then they would increase the area’s links with the inner city so that the area would be awash with crime and drugs. In other words, a middle class White area would be deluged with Blacks and Asians, bringing these problems from their urban ghetto.

I also understand that some of the events Powell alluded to in his wretched speech were completely bogus. A friend of mine, who was very anti-racist, told me that they tried to investigate Powell’s allegation that old ladies had had excrement pushed through their letter boxes by ‘grinning picaninnies’. They couldn’t find it. Never happened. Another friend also told me that another, similar incident, was also imaginary. Another old lady had claimed that a black man had forced his way into her home, and defecated on her carpet. That never happened too. The old lady, apparently, was a nasty piece of work continually making up vile stories about her neighbours. She was, however, supported by a Black family next door, who looked after her, and who seemed to regard her hateful slanders as a bit of joke. There’s a whole chapter devoted to Powell and the ‘Rivers of Blood’ and its lies and falsehoods in the book, Bloody Foreigners: A History of the English.

I am also not convinced that everyone who voted for Brexit is racist. Some left-wingers voted for it because the EU is a very neoliberal organisation, which does have policies promoting privatisation. For left-wing critiques of the EU, read Lobster or Counterpunch. Many people undoubtedly voted ‘Leave’ because they wanted to give a shock to the elites governing this country, without actually considering that it might actually happen. Unfortunately, they won. And most of the people, who did vote ‘Leave’ probably were racists, as Tom Pride and so many others have pointed out.

So I’m going to say that people have a right to listen to this programme, and hear what Powell actually said, regardless of the dangers. I sympathise with Adonis, but at the same time, I don’t like anyone – including former New Labour ministers – telling me what I may or may not listen to. I sincerely hope that the Beeb will in this instance try to live up to it role as a public service broadcaster, and provide a suitably incisive critique of it. Regardless of whether Boris, Heffer and the rest of the Tories want it or not.

Mike has posted a number of pieces on his blog commenting on the right-wing bias displayed by Andrew Marr on his Sunday morning show. One recent example of this was his comment to a Tory guest, who came on immediately after he had given a hard interview to someone from the Labour Party. His interview of the Tory was softer, and at the end of it he leaned over to tell her that she had done ‘very well’. Or something like it.

I’m not surprised by this bias. Marr is a fan of the free market, the sacred ideology at the heart of Thatcherism, against which no-one is allowed to blaspheme or question. He was in the I newspaper a few weeks ago praising Steven Pinker’s new book, which argues that the world has got immensely better due to science, reason and markets. Pinker’s a neuroscientist and atheist polemicist. The book’s a successor to his previous work, The Better Angels of Our Nature. This was written to refute the claim that the 20th century was the bloodiest period in human history. This argument has been made in defence of religion, as much atheist polemic is based on the violence and bloodshed that has been generated by religion. But the 20th century is a problem, as the massacres and genocides there took place within an increasingly secular world, and in the case of the horrors committed by Communist regimes, were perpetrated by aggressively atheist regimes. And in the case of the Fascist regimes, it’s questionable how religious they were. General Franco in Spain believed that he was defending Christianity from secularism and materialism when he launched his attack on the Republican government, and horrifically many Christians did support the Fascist regimes against the supposed threats of Communism and Socialism. I’m well aware that Hitler claimed that he was doing ‘the Lord’s work’ in persecuting the Jews in Mein Kampf, but in his Table Talk he has nothing but contempt for Christianity, and wants astronomical observatories set up near schools as part of a scientific campaign against the religion. Hitler’s own religious beliefs seem to have been a kind of monistic pantheism, possibly not that far removed from those of the Monist League, who also sported the swastika as their symbol. As for Mussolini, the Italian dictated signed the Lateran Accords with the papacy, in which the Pope finally recognised Italy’s existence as a state in return for Roman Catholic religious education in schools. But il Duce had started out as a radical socialist, and many members of the Fascist party still were vehemently atheist. Much depended on the religious opinions of the local Fascist ras whether Roman Catholic religious education was taught in the schools in his area. I don’t wish to go into this argument now, whether these regimes were really atheist or not, or if the 20th century really was the bloodiest period in human history. I just wish to make the point that this was the issue at the heart of Pinker’s previous book.

Pinker’s new book apparently tells us that everything’s getting better, including the environment, and Pinker marshals an impressive arrays of facts. But all this said to me was that people and governments have become more ecologically conscious. It does not mean that we aren’t facing the devastating loss of an extraordinary number of this planet’s animal and plant species, or that we face catastrophic global warming which may make the Middle East uninhabitable.

But even more questionable is Pinker’s and Marr’s assertion that modern, post-Enlightenment society has been immensely improved thanks to the science, reason and markets. In the case of science and reason, at one level the statement is obviously true. Human life has benefited immensely from scientific advance, particularly in medicine. But the view that science and reason didn’t exist before then is one that many Medieval scholars would strenuously reject. In contrast to the stereotypes, the Middle Ages actually wasn’t anti-science. There are poems from the 12th-13th centuries celebrating it, and the new knowledge that was flooding into Europe from the Islamic world. The 15th century English poem, The Court of Sapience, lists the various branches of knowledge known to the medieval world, and celebrates them as the area of ‘Dame Sapience’, an idealised personification of wisdom. As for superstition and the occult, historians have also pointed out that the Middle Ages were also an age of scepticism as well as faith. Medieval theologians wrote texts arguing that visions of demons were more likely caused by a full stomach interfering with the correct functioning of the nerves, and so causing bad dreams. Others doubted whether the seers, who claimed to be able to identify thieves through peering in bowls of water or other reflecting surfaces, had any such powers, and were simply using common knowledge to put the blame on notorious thieves. And in contrast to what Marr apparently thinks, free market capitalism did not suddenly emerge in the 18th century with the French Physiocrats and then Adam Smith. In fact, some Christian theologians were arguing for free trade as far back as the thirteenth century.

As for free market capitalism benefiting humanity, the evidence today is that it really doesn’t. The neoliberalism ushered in by Thatcher and Reagan has done nothing but make the lives of the poor much poorer across the world, and in so doing has increased international tension and political violence. The Korean economist, Ha-Joon Chang in his book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, shows how the strong economies of the world’s developed nations were all created, not by free trade, but by protectionism.

This is very clearly not something any true-blue Thatcherite wants to hear. But it also shows the strange, cult-like nature of the ideology of free trade capitalism. A number of writers have pointed out the apparently illogical, absolute belief its supporters have, even when they are shown the plentiful evidence to the contrary. They still go on believing and demanding free market solutions, even when it is abundantly clear to everyone else that not only do they not work, they are even causing immense harm. And Marr is clearly one of these true believers. He also seems to have uncritically accepted the view that science, reason and free market capitalism were all products of the Enlightenment, when academic historians have been pushing the origins of science and capitalism further back to the Middle Ages, and demonstrated that the Age of Faith was also one of Reason, however irrational it now seems to us.

Marr’s praise of the book and its promotion of the free market also gives more than an indication of his own political beliefs, and why he is much less sympathetic to left-wing guests on his show than those from the right. He’s another member of the cult of neoliberal market capitalism, and this has to be protected at all costs from unbelievers. Even when he and the Beeb swear impartiality.

You can tell the Tories are in trouble as they’re desperately trying to steal policies, and even change their name, to make themselves look a bit more like the Labour party. Robert Halfon, whose name reminds me of ‘Gag Halfrunt’, one of the characters in The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, has suggested that the Tories change their name to the ‘Conservative Working Party’. Well, Cameron suggested something similar a few years ago, when he and the Tories came out with slogans and speeches declaring that their party, not Labour, stood up for ‘working people’.

No, they don’t. Never have done. The Tory party has never stood up for what the Victorians called ‘the laboring poor’, except for a brief period in the early 19th century. They have always represented the aristocracy and big business. That is, the capitalists, the owners and senior management. They most definitely have not represented the interests of manual workers and lower middle class employees.

Mike points out that while people say that you shouldn’t compare them to the Nazi party, in this case the comparison is appropriate. They are exactly like the fiercely anti-Socialist Nazi party, the full name of which was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

Hitler inserted ‘Socialist’ in the title, against considerable opposition from the rest of the party, as a direct challenge to the democratic socialists of the SPD and USPD, the German majority Socialist parties. See Reichwing Watch’s video debunking contemporary right-wing attempts to claim the Nazis were Socialists. Reichwing Watch has an impeccable source for this assertion: Adolf himself. It’s in Mein Kampf.

It wasn’t only the Nazis, who tried this trick in order to win votes from the Socialists. Mussolini styled his newspaper, the Popolo d’Italia, the paper of ‘soldiers and producers’ in order to continue to appeal to the workers, as well as the rich businessmen he was also seeking to win over to support the nascent Fascist movement against socialism and the organized working class.

And Thatcher herself tried a similar trick when she appropriated the phrase ‘creators of wealth’. Previously that had been a part of Socialist and Communist ideology. The true creators of wealth, in Socialist doctrine, were the working class, the people who actually made things and did things. Hence the Communist slogan, ‘All Wealth to the Creators of Wealth!’ Under Thatcher it was appropriated to mean big business, and specifically the capitalists and financiers.

May started spinning that line at the Tory speech last night when she started very loudly praising ‘the creators of wealth’, by which she meant big business, senior management, financiers and so on, although she also mentioned ‘working people’. She could also have said, ‘daring entrepreneurs’, but that would really have let the Nazi cat out of the bag. It’s who the head of the neo-Nazi National Democrat Party in Germany declared in the late 1960s his party represented, among others.

More moderate right-wing parties have also tried to make themselves seem more socialist as well. Ken Livingstone in his book, Livingstone’s Labour, note how the German and Italian Christian Democrats tried to redefine their party to appear more socialistic, because capitalism and traditional right-wing politics had been tainted by their collaboration with the Nazis.

The Tories are very much aware that neoliberalism is not benefiting the mass of ordinary people in this country, regardless of the lies and propaganda spouted by May and the rest of the Tory faithful at this conference. They’re also aware that they are seen very much as the party of the rich. Hence the attempts to steal names and policies from Labour.

As for capitalism, there are indications that it’s doomed. The radical American journalist Chris Hedges said in an interview that the big financiers in the EU know the whole system is about to come crashing down, and are just trying to loot as much as possible before it does. And if capitalism ever does collapse, as predicted by Marxist theory, you can bet that May, or whoever else is in charge of the party by then, will desperately try to make the party of big business, aristocrats and banksters sound like the Communist Party.

In the meantime, I want the slogan ‘creators of wealth’ to return to the people it was really meant to describe: ordinary working people. Down with the Tories. All wealth to the creators of wealth! And all power to the Soviets!

Yesterday I got a phone call from Mike, my brother, from Vox Political. Mike’s standing in the local council elections as a Labour candidate in Powys. He told me that he had been contacted by the local newspaper, the Powys County Times, who told him that they had been contacted by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, who are calling for Mike to be deselected because he’s an anti-Semite, as well as a conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier.

Saaaaay whaaaaat?

Mike’s none of those things, obviously. He really doesn’t distinguish or discriminate against people according to the race or religion, or, come to that, their sexual orientation.

I can remember Mike telling me very proudly when he was at College, how one of his female friends had asked him to be a reader in an event she was putting on to commemorate the victims of the Shoah. Mike was one of those reading some of the names of those who had been murdered by the Nazis simply because they were Jews.

Also during his time at College, Mike and some of the other students went on trip to Berlin. One of the history courses I took for my undergraduate degree was on the rise of Communist and Fascist regimes in Europe. Mike brought back for me a book the-then West German government had published to accompany an exhibition on part of the SS headquarters that was being redeveloped. The book was on the SS, Gestapo and the Reichssicherheitsdienst, and their role as the Nazi state’s murderous organs of repression and genocide. The book and the exhibition not only described their place and function in the mechanism as terror, it also gave proper place to the Jews and others, who were murdered by the regime. It gave the precise figures, and even photographs and brief biographies of some of those, both Jewish and gentile, who had been killed by these thugs.

The very accusation that Mike is in anyway an anti-Semite is ridiculous. The accusation has been levelled at Mike because he’s defended Ken Livingstone, and several of the other members of the Labour party, who were unfairly accused of anti-Semitism last year as part of the machinations of the Blairites and their associates in the Israel Lobby to hold on to power. Apart from anti-Semitism, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism has also moaned that Mike called Blair and his coterie ‘neoliberals’. As Tony Blair was a fan of Thatcher’s, and believed in privatisation and deregulation and the cutting of the welfare state, that’s exactly what Tory Tony was.

Mike’s now posted up a piece about this vile slur on his blog, followed by a point for point rebuttal of their smears. He writes

Today I received a telephone call from a newspaper reporter, saying the paper had been contacted by an organisation calling itself the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, which had claimed that I (Mike Sivier) should be deselected as a council candidate because I’m an anti-Semite and hate Jews.

For the record, I’m not, and I don’t. Obviously.

Admittedly, the story seems likely to run only in a local(ish) newspaper, the Powys County Times, but the timing is significant as, if a negative story about me goes to press in this weekend’s edition (the paper is a weekly), there will be no time for corrections before people go to the polls on May 4. I believe this is intentional on the part of these Campaign Against Anti-Semitism people.

The organisation seems to be more concerned with defending the reputation of the state of Israel than anything else – according to Powerbase, the “online guide to networks of power, lobbying… deceptive … public relations and the communications activities of governments and other interests”, member (or former member, it’s hard to tell) Joseph Cohen founded the Israel Advocacy Movement – which concerns itself with countering “the increasing hostility Israel suffers at the hands of the British public, caused by huge volumes disinformation circulated by Israel’s enemies”.

For the record, I’m not one of Israel’s enemies. I have no objection to there being a state of Israel. I do, however, object to hostile activities authorised and enacted by its government, where Israel is the aggressor. I would object to those activities if they were carried out by any country or government, and I would hope that you would feel the same.

For information, the Israel Advocacy Movement has “campaigns” against the UK charity War on Want, singling out its support for the boycott movement against Israel, and the pro-Palestinian Palestine Return Centre. And a local newspaper in Kent reported that Kent Anti-Racism Network accused the IAM of having a hand in the controversial suspension by the Labour Party of longstanding anti-racist activist Jackie Walker, for allegedly anti-Semitic comments.

According to the Charity Commission, Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is a “volunteer-led charity dedicated to exposing and countering antisemitism through education and zero-tolerance enforcement of the law.” This seems to mean that it is an organisation dedicated to bringing private prosecutions against individuals it accuses of anti-Semitic activity, claiming that the Crown Prosecution Service “has failed to take action, so now we must act instead”.

An alternative interpretation, of course, as used by one blogger currently being prosecuted by this organisation, is that the CAA attempts “to use the law to silence dissenters”.

No trustees are listed on the Charity Commission’s website. Why not? What reason do they have for secrecy?

The organisation’s website is registered at 167-169 Great Portland Street, London W1W 5PF. It must be pretty cramped as apparently Companies House has 1,109 firms registered there, all on the 2nd floor.

Is anything about this starting to seem a little suspicious to you?

This is, unfortunately, par for the course for anyone, who criticises Israel for its barbarous history of terrorism, murder and expulsion against the indigenous Palestinians, or defends those who have. The Zionist lobby has tried to stop justified criticism of Israel by extending the definition of anti-Semitism to include criticism of the state of Israel. As Mike has pointed out time and again, this is a highly contentious and discredited definition of anti-Semitism. It is not how Wilhelm Marr, the founder of the Bund der Antisemiten – League of Anti-Semites – in 19th century Germany defined ‘anti-Semitism’, which he himself coined. The League defined anti-Semitism as hatred of Jews simply as Jews, as regardless of Judaism as a religion. Or as they put it

“Was er glaubt, ist einerlei
in der Rasse liegt die Schweinerei”.

Which roughly translates as ‘What he believes is beside the point, the swinishness lies in the race’. (See the extract ‘Der Politische Antisemitismus’ in the book Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1871-1914: Ein historisches Lesebuch, edited and with an introduction by Gerhard A. Ritter (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1981) 131. In case you’re worried, it’s a entirely respectable, mainstream German history textbook, and certainly not the product of some diseased far right publishing house.

In some ways, it’s almost a badge of honour for Mike to be smeared by these people, as he joins a long line of decent people, who have been so libelled. These include not only gentiles, but also proud Jews, who are active members of their community. Those Mike has defended are people, who are genuinely anti-racist and have campaigned against anti-Semitism. Many of them are Jews, who have personally suffered real anti-Semitic attacks and abuse from the Nazi right. Mike also makes the point that he has no animus towards Israel. He is simply acting to defend those, who have been unfairly and maliciously smeared.
Critics of Israel’s brutalisation of the Palestinians, like Professor Finkelstein in America, and Ilan Pappe over here, have pointed out that the Israel lobby exists to manufacture anti-Semites, by which they mean it operates by smearing the country’s critics as such. The American radical magazine, Counterpunch, has published a series of articles about the way the Zionist lobby in America has done this. And one of the complaints about the Israel lobby is that it is itself viciously anti-Semitic. It particularly seems to single out Jewish critics for the worst vilification.

What makes this accusation particularly offensive, is that these libels against Mike and many others like him in the Labour party have been made when real anti-Semitism is on the rise around the world. Yesterday, Counterpunch’s Robert K. Tan published a piece commenting on the rise of militarism in Japan, following the Japanese government allowing the Japanese Fascist-era Imperial Rescript on Education to be read again in schools and the approval of Hitler’s Mein Kampf as teaching material. Although the legislation for the latter states that it may not be used to teach theories of racial supremacy. See: http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/25/abe-is-taking-japan-back-to-the-bad-old-fascism/
The British anti-racism/ anti-religious extremism organisation, Hope Not Hate, has also noted the rise in real, blatant anti-Semitism amongst the Fascist far right over here. The banned Nazi youth gang, National Action made very explicit anti-Semitic speeches repeating the old conspiracist libels that the Jews were trying to undermine and destroy the White race. The real anti-Semites deserve nothing but contempt and continual opposition and resistance. It is disgusting that Mike, and other decent people like him, are smeared as Jew-hating bigots by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and its shadowy paymasters in the Israel Advocacy Movement.